Different types of moveable barrier operators have been sold over the years and these barrier operator systems have been used to actuate various types of moveable barriers. For example, garage door operators have been used to move garage doors and gate operators have been used to open and close gates.
Such barrier movement operators may include various mechanisms to facilitate the opening and closing of the barriers. For instance, a wall control unit may be coupled to the barrier movement operator and send signals to an operator control system thereby causing the operator to open and close the barrier. In addition, operators often include a receiver unit at the operator control system to receive wireless transmissions from a hand-held code transmitter or from a keypad transmitter, which may be affixed to the outside of the area barred by the barrier or other structure.
In some previous systems, multiple barrier operators are deployed within the same system to move multiple barriers. For example, in a dual gate system, a first gate operator is used to move a first gate while a second gate operator is used to move a second gate. In this situation, the two gates have to be moved by the gate operators in harmony in order to avoid problems such as the wrong gate closing first when a predetermined order is required.
Various attempts have been made to allow multiple movable barriers to operate in synchronization. In one example, wires were installed to connect the two operators and facilitate communication between the two operators via the wires. Unfortunately, this often required digging a trench for the wires and this could be difficult or costly to implement in existing driveways that were composed of asphalt or concrete. The number of wires also often increased with the complexity of the system thereby making the installation of the wires difficult or cumbersome. Radio Frequency (RF) communication between the different barrier operators was also attempted. In these approaches, RF signals were sent from one barrier operator to another in order to coordinate operations between different barrier operators. Unfortunately, RF-based systems were sometimes subjected to interference of the signals thereby making it difficult or impossible to coordinate the operation of the multiple barrier operators.